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Nene Nanakorobi, a full-body cyborg girl, is moving to Cenancle Island to live with her aunt. While on the cruise heading to the island, she meets the eccentric scientist Uzal Delilah and her long-suffering "assistant" Clarion, another full-body cyborg (Well, maybe; Nene thinks she's a cyborg. But there's evidence that she's pure machine, and quite illegal, without the safeguards and limits AIs are required to have in this world). When terrorists attack the island however, Nene finds herself helping Uzal "defuse" the situation, thanks to being given access to the Pandora device housed in Clarion's body.

At the end of all this, Nene finds herself as Clarion's new "owner"... And she hasn't even managed to find her aunt's home yet!

Illustrated by Koshi Rikudo (of Excel Saga fame), Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn (紅殻のパンドラ/Koukaku no Pandora) is a cyberpunk action comedy manga based on an unused concept of Masamune Shirow (designs of which would eventually be re-used in Ghost in the Shell: Arise). It was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Newtype Ace magazine, before being moved to Niconico Ace, and is licensed in English by Seven Seas Entertainment.

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An anime adaptation by Studio Gokumi was first shown as a movie in theaters on December 2015, before being formally aired during the Winter 2016 Anime season. The anime formally adapts seven and a half volumes (nearly all published material by that point in time) of the manga.

Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn features the following tropes:

Adaptational Nationality: The terrorist face Uzal is hiding behind is portrayed much more generically in the animé than in the manga original, where he looks much more like an Middle Eastern Islamic terrorist including the flag which is missing from the animé.

A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Over the course of their little rebellion, Uzal's subordinates activate BUER, an experimental machine, in the hope of it helping them out. The problem is, because the activation code they used was a dummy left by Uzal because something like this might happen, it instead goes berserk , and starts indiscriminately attacking everything in Cenancle Island. The first thing Nene and Clarion have to do is to try and find a way to shut it down.

Big Fancy House: Takumi's mansion looks like a strange cross between a futuristic machine, a Shinto shrine and a Taoist temple. It starts verging on Bizarrchitecture when her underground emergency shelter looks like a perfectly ordinary Japanese bedroom built inside a giant brain.

Big Brother Instinct: The robot thief Mr. Chicken is very protective of his younger brother Mr. Fried: When Clarion cut off Fried's cyborg hand for touching her ears, Chicken got extremely angry and ordered his bother and his other subordinates to destroy her instead of seizing her undamaged as attempted earlier (he thought that Nene and Clarion were two very sophisticated and this extremely expensive robots; He was thus ready to pass on a very lucrative opportunity as a thief just to take revenge for his brother's cyborg hand). He also pleaded to Clarion to not hurt his brother after Nene caught them later.

Nene's favorite video game is "MonBasu for the original DSD." The game is clearly intended to be Monster Hunter (translators of Pandora call it "Monster Bash", but perhaps "Monster Buster" would have been better), and the platform parodies both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.

Blatant Lies: Suuuuure Uzal, Nene really did pass out that one time, and you didn't do any illegal modifications on her while she was unconscious.

BrainComputer Interface: The plug-in mental interfaces make their return here from Ghost in the Shell. However, much like full-body prosthesis and cyber-brains, it's a new enough technology that early adopters like Nene's aunt still can't even dream of doing the tricks Major Kusanagi is able to get away with (like having a real-time conversation while participating in a virtual-reality online chat at the same time). Demonstrated in episode 3, where Nene finds Takumi's body catatonic when she's plugged in and "working".

The poor reporter who, in every episode so far, just ends up getting herself hurt. She doesn't even get far enough to introduce her name! Verges on Iron Butt Monkey, as her mishaps haven't managed to kill her (permanently anyway; episode 3 shows that she was resuscitated by a paramedic) yet.

Also Uzal's unnamed subordinates get abused a lot.

BUER, whether it's because of Takumi wanting to dismantle him to find out how he works, or Clarion locking him up in a safe to prevent Takumi from dismantling him, or inflicting Amusing Injuries on him for being a Lovable Sex Maniac.

Child Soldiers: Uzal recruits Nene into fighting against various threats and is surprised that she had no combat training in school (the latter adding to the Crapsaccharine World vibe of the setting as it implies that combat training is a normal occurrence in schools even thought it's also implied to be voluntary, at least).

Crapsaccharine World: Cenancle may be a clean, luxurious, high-tech city built on a sunny tropical island, but under the surface it's still a cyberpunk setting, with conflicts over human augmentation and the control of weapons and technology.

Cuteness Proximity: Nene literally goes ga-ga over Clarion, and it doesn't take much to get her to cooperate with Uzal's zany scheme because it gives her the chance to be close to Clarion.

She has a similar reaction to Phobos, the "sister" of Clarion and a (former (?)) member of the villainous organization "Poseidon".

Cyberpunk: Has all the hallmarks of a Masamune Shirow series — cyborgs, advanced AI, mental computer interfaces — with the difference is that Pandora is a comedy.

Cyborg: This being born from a Masamune Shirow concept, of course the series features this. It's noted however that full-body cyborgs like Nene are extremely rare, as unlike in Ghost in the Shell, the people of Pandora's setting have shown difficulty in adapting to a mechanized body.

The access port to the Pandora Device is located close to Clarion's crotch, and Nene can only gain the information she needs through her finger. This means that, whenever Nene needs to use the Pandora Device, to other people it looks like she's fingering Clarion.

Takumi trying to touch Clarion's ears against her will, and Clarion's reaction to it, look a lot like an attempted rape. This is why Nene got mad and shut down the virtual environment Takumi was running.

The third leg of the CNU looks very phallic and even starts to point upwards when Nene shows it her panties as demanded like an erect penis.

The Dragon: Fear, the silent and giant robot that serves as Kurtz's bodyguard.

Eagleland: Just like in its inspiration Ghost in the Shell there's an American Empire (also called "Imperial Americana") in this setting, too.

Elephant in the Living Room: Nene is so smitten with Clarion that she exhibits an unfortunate lack of curiosity about the situation she's currently in —

Uzal told Nene that Clarion is "the same as you," leading Nene to assume that Clarion is another full-body cyborg. But Clarion doesn't need to sleep, always obeys Uzal's directives and doesn't seem to know much about how regular humans live, Takumi only ever refers to her as "Uzal's puppet", Dr. Toto thinks there's something strange about her, and there's an Evil Twin of her working for Poseidon. It makes us question whether Clarion is actually a highly advanced android — she may have the same kind of prosthetic body as Nene, but her brain could be an AI instead of being originally human. It probably wouldn't matter much to Nene if this were the case, since she treats all robots like people anyway.

Uzal was running a False Flag Operation so that her dirty work could be blamed on terrorist attacks.

When the Project 2501 surveillance AI tells Nene her name is "25", Nene nicknames her "Niko".

Uzal came up with the alias "Saharu" because her ID number when she worked at Poseidon was 386. Similarly, she gave Takumi her name because her ID number was 1093.

Greater-Scope Villain: After Ian Kurtz was defeated and apparently killed, the actual Big Bad was revealed to be the villainous organization "Poseidon" who persue a nebulous evil plan called "Apollo Seed Project".

As far as the rare owners of full-body prosthesis, Nene is one of these. As an adepter, she's able to make use of her cyborg body far better than it should be possible. Remember, unlike Ghost in the Shell, full-body cyborgs are still rare, and there are actual cases where the patient's mind simply rejects the mechanical body it was given.

A feature of the Pandora Device. Whenever Nene uploads one of the Elpis series commands from Clarion, she instantly gains the ability if not the actual mental knowledge related to a specific skill. See how her body unconsciously expertly loads and aims the handgun she was given despite her saying at the same time that she had no idea how to do so.

Jumped at the Call: Really, Nene could have just easily walked away when the initial Cenancle Island attacks happened, but nope, she just had to go back and make sure Clarion was safe.

Lost in Translation: The reason why Takumi doesn't want to be addressed with "aunt" doesn't carry over well into English: the Japanese word Nene used for "aunt", "obaa-sama", can also mean "grandmother", "granny" or even "old hag".

Nene is Flanderized into being this towards Clarion in the "Pandoradio" segments of the end credits.

Cenancle is actually a fairly reasonable science fiction setting. The strangest parts of the story's premise — Clarion, the Pandora Device, BUER and the cosplay minion squad — can all be chalked up to Uzal being a pervert.

Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: What kicks off the plot to begin with — Uzal underpays her employees and forces them to wear embarrassing cosplay, so they decide to take over her systems and rebel while she was away. It... doesn't exactly go as planned.

Motive Rant: Kurtz goes on a five-minute long rant in episode 11 about how only the American Empire has the right to impose peace on the rest of the world. Hilariously, all of this was completely ignored by Nene, who was more interested in Clarion's condition.

Ms. Exposition: Vli——'s main purpose in the story is to deliver information about events on Cenancle until she gets interrupted by her Butt-Monkey tendencies.

Mundane Utility: The Pandora Device's Elpis series commands give Nene the ability to do frankly amazing things, but as shown by episode 4, there's nothing stopping Nene from using it to temporarily become, say, a master chef.

When Nene pretends to be an android to infiltrate Kurtz's base, she gives her name as "Hanako Dosukoi", which is the alias Excel always uses whenever she disguises herself.

The Nicknamer: Nene calles Clarion "Cla-rin", which Seven Seas' translation of the manga writes as "Clara-rin", and Funimation's translation of the anime spells "Cla-ring". She asks the Gertsecommas for their permission to call them "Gercoma-san", even though they're non-sentient.

Non-Indicative Name: The "optical camo" mode that Nene gains whenever she uses the Pandora Device doesn't actually act like the Chameleon Camouflage the term is usually associated with in other Masamune Shirow series. Instead, it's more of a hologram layered over her normal outfit. There's actualChameleon Camouflage in-series however, but it's instead called "stealth mode", like when used on the Gertsecommas Takumi uses to watch over Nene.

Paper-Thin Disguise: Nobody seems to recognize Nene and Clarion when the Optical Camo feature of the Pandora Device changes their outfits.

Reality Ensues: While Pandora is primarily a comedy, it's hard to laugh off the fact that countless people died during the chaos that ensued at Cenancle Island, as shown by the lifeless bodies lying around the resident Butt-Monkey reporter when she's revived by paramedics. Even the news feeds that followed the incident were uncomfortably similar to what would normally be shown after real-life terror attacks too.

Schedule Fanatic: Colonel Kurtz always carries a pocketwatch and constantly reprimands people for being late.

BUER's Central Nervous Unit is based on the Goetic demonBuer, who is usually depicted with five goat legs and the head of a lion.

His boring machine body is a giant black eyeball that resembles the "Voglersphere" from the Giant Robo OVA.

Masamune Shirow's fondness for Classical Mythology continues to be evident here: there's the symbolism associated with Pandora's box, the cruise ship that takes Nene to Cenancle is called the Epimetheus, districts in Cenancle are named Area Vulcan, Area Mercury and Area Charon, and Vli——'s rival TV personality is named Proserpina. Cenancle is a volcanic island, and the crater bay in its center is called Ennosigaios (Earth Shaker, an epithet of Poseidon.)

Clarion is often drawn as a cat-shaped silhouette, which looks like a white version of Chiyo's dad.

When BUER's secret stash is inadvertently revealed to the whole world by Kurtz, the person shown representing the Germans browsing the net at that point is U-511 from Kantai Collection.

The jail the employees of Uzal are transferred to is called Sisyphus Correctional Facility (most likely because the Sisyphus from myth was sentenced to an endless and pointless task as punishment).

The Gertsecommas look as if they were also inspired by the gun turret robots in Portal.

Being stuck in a garbage disposal unit in the enemies base and trying to hack the base's computer system to avoid being killed in the garbage disposal process? That's what happened to Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca and Leia in A New Hope, too!

Fear resembles Sunny Wong from R.O.D the TV (their appearance and that both are powerful minions of the antagonist and were created rather than born).

Spider Tank: The Shinokaomi, shown in the OP and ridden by Clarion when she attacks the American Imperial forces in Uzal's underground base. Think of it as a bigger red relation of the Tachikomas, again.

Third-Person Person: Both Clarion and Takumi refer to themselves in the third person occasionally.

Transformation Sequence: Nene gains a Magical Girl-esque transformation sequence thanks to the Optical Camo Mode installed into her by Uzal. The outfit she ends up wearing, by the way, wouldn't look out of the place in one of Sheryl Nome's concerts.

Unusual User Interface: Nene soon learns that the reboot system to BUER happens to be... multiple statues of Uzal in various parodies of famous sculptures. Even Clarion is visibly disgusted when she finds out.

Verbal Tic: Takumi has a very particular way of speaking, ~daya. A clip compilation is available here.

The Seven Seas English translation of the manga translates this by having her end her sentences with "Yeah!"

Wave Motion Gun: What BUER was equipped with. It should tell you a lot about who Uzal really is when what's supposed to be an earth boring machine is equipped with a battleship-grade plasma cannon.

A smaller version is introduced later on, the Yatsukahagi, which is mounted on the Shinokaomi. It gets used to blast through one of the bulkheads in Uzal's base.

Yuri Genre: See the page quote.note Funimation's translation of the anime version of this narration: "In advanced nations, cyborgs and autonomous robots were to some extent starting to become a common sight. It was an age in which the world was filled with all sorts of calamity and conflict, and people wandered about in search of relief. This story has absolutely nothing to do with such an age. It's one of girl meets girl."

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